To Live Music, Always.
My love for live music, a brief history. To singing a series of old choir songs with your dad every night before bed when you are three years old.
To learning to play the piano as a kid and reveling in the feeling that you can make music come out of your fingers.
To the excitement of getting to see a musical at the local high school when you are nine and falling deeply in love with the singers even though you can barely see them sitting on your knees in the back of the theater.
To squishing into seats made for people in the 1800s at the top tier of the Academy and hearing Nutcracker Suite for the first time. To crying in the same theater once again as "you hear the people sing..."
To falling in love with jazz and classic rock simultaneously at 16 and having not a clue what was on the radio. To driving to Six Flags to see a band that was three times your age just for a taste of them live.
To discovering your alto 2 voice is so low you sometimes get asked to sing tenor. To consequently falling in love with Etta and Ella and all the ladies of low notes.
To singing in a small garden in London a tune so fragile and incandescent, you cry every time.
To getting to spend 6-8 hours a week, if not more, in class moving to music made by musicians right there in the room with you. To Russian piano petite allegros and jazzy synthesizers and bringing the cajon outside. Nothing is more energizing than feeling a musician follow the ups and downs of your movement across the floor.
To traveling to far away places of the Golden Coast where drums are beating everywhere you go and the rhythms challenge you and grow you and become engrained in your soul.
To going to hear artists you love in beautiful venues, old and new, some smoky and intimate, others open and humid. To singing along to every song.
To leaning out your window with your roommate laughing and dancing along to the boy band on the quad.
To traveling to more places, squeezing through a crowd to catch glimpses of live salsa and a fully uniformed band. To later swaying your hips to a trio of Cuban men serenading your team at dinner time.
To being in your community of faith at every age, being overwhelmed by the power of music when God is involved.
To anything acoustic making you go weak in the knees.
To technology letting you listen to live streams of concerts you wished you could apparate to. To getting to discover the live recordings of smaller bands you may never have encountered otherwise and you are so grateful because their music makes the most sense to your spirit.
To walking around the lawn with one of your best college friends while one of your favorite bands fills the amphitheater with deep lyrics and soul-moving melodies. To continuing to hum and listen to these same notes days later because that's how long live a music fills you up for. To art flowing out of you from the sound.
To day-dreaming of the next time you can be in the presence of live music again -- with the coming weekend -- so you tell your soul, "Halfway there. Soon. So Soon."
Inspired by attending a concert by The Lumineers last weekend, I did my very best not to make any puns about Tuesday "notes"... well there it is. So close.